In the second book of the Bible, the story of the Golden Calf is a warning about what happens when people replace truth with idols of their own making. In Exodus 32:4, the Israelites fashioned a golden calf and proclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel.”
This impatience with Moses was not merely an act of worship; it was a rejection of truth, accountability and moral clarity.
Edmond W. Davis
Today in Arkansas, a troubling modern version of that Golden Calf stands — not cast in gold but built from rhetoric, entitlement and political theater. Recently, charter school youth leader Erika Kirk publicly encouraged students to join Turning Point USA and its high school affiliate, Turning Point USA High School Program, telling young people those who feel they are “persecuted because of their faith in Jesus Christ” will find support there.
That claim — of persecution — demands scrutiny. Because the context in which it is delivered matters. It matters when such language emerges not from the margins but from the political center of power, amplified by the governor’s podium and supported by hundreds of millions of dollars in state influence.
Let us call the phenomenon what it is: White Evangelical Persecution Complex. It is a narrative claiming conservative white Christians are being marginalized in a secular society.
Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. According to Pew Research, white evangelical Protestants remain one of the most politically influential religious groups in the United States, wielding disproportionate power in elections, public policy and cultural institutions.
“When unquestioned privilege is challenged, it can feel like oppression to those accustomed to preference.”
The persecution narrative thrives in the gap between perception and reality. It is not rooted in the loss of religious freedom — because no such loss has occurred. Rather, it emerges when historical dominance begins to erode. When unquestioned privilege is challenged, it can feel like oppression to those accustomed to preference.
In other words, what is being described as persecution often simply is the experience of sharing the public square. The contradiction becomes especially stark in Arkansas.
The state government recently enacted policies that restrict how history — particularly Black history — is taught in public schools. Through the Arkansas LEARNS Act, provisions were introduced to ban Critical Race Theory and what officials labeled “left-wing indoctrination.”
At the same time, students were denied excused absences to protest or advocate for legislation. Civic participation by young people — long considered a cornerstone of democratic engagement — was effectively discouraged.
Yet in a remarkable twist of logic, the same political leadership that restricts civic expression in schools now encourages organizations like Turning Point USA to establish student chapters across Arkansas. The contradiction is glaring. When students advocate for racial justice, they are warned against indoctrination. When they join ideological political clubs aligned with state leadership, they are celebrated as patriots.
That is not neutrality. That is a preference disguised as a principle.
“When students advocate for racial justice, they are warned against indoctrination. When they join ideological political clubs aligned with state leadership, they are celebrated as patriots.”
The Bible warns about this moral inversion. In Isaiah 5:20, the prophet declares: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”
The selective application of civic freedom reveals something deeper: A fear that the nation’s narrative is changing. For generations, white evangelical communities have held extraordinary cultural authority in American life. According to analysis from the Brookings Institution, religious conservatives remain deeply embedded within the nation’s political and institutional leadership.
That reality hardly resembles persecution.
The language of victimhood becomes most pronounced precisely when that authority is questioned — when public schools teach a fuller account of American history, when new voices enter civic life or when communities once excluded demand equal footing.
The irony is that Christianity itself warns against such arrogance. In Matthew 7:3, Jesus asks, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own?”
It is a call for humility — something conspicuously absent from the persecution narrative now echoing through parts of Arkansas politics.
When a movement claiming marginalization speaks from the governor’s podium, backed by legislative authority and enormous political capital, the claim begins to resemble the Golden Calf of Exodus: An idol constructed to justify power rather than challenge it.
Some politicians do not resist change loudly. They do something even stranger. They hug the past so tightly in hopes that the future will suffocate quietly in the room with them.
But history does not suffocate. It moves forward — sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully, but always forward.
The question for Arkansas is not whether the future will arrive. It will. The real question is whether we will greet it with courage, honesty and moral clarity — or whether we will continue bowing before modern golden calves built from fear and nostalgia.
Because when power claims persecution while silencing others, the problem is not faith. The problem is idolatry.
Edmond W. Davis is an American social historian, international speaker and Amazon No. 1 bestselling author. He is a global authority on the Tuskegee Airmen and serves as the founder of the National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest. A native of Philadelphia and current resident of Little Rock, Davis is committed to cultural empowerment and educational equity through storytelling and civic engagement.